Dreams Come True: Arunachal Pradesh - Land of The Rising Sun

Traveling is a celebration, celebration in a way of cherishing and appreciating the bountiful beauty of nature. We decided to indulge in such a journey into the land of the Rising Sun, mystical Arunachal Pradesh and India’s eastern-most state. Arunachal Pradesh literally means “The Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains”. Due to its elemental forces of nature, all playing their best in a single ground, this tour was one crazy tour and the plan was crazier.

The first week of December 2012 had filled us with ideas to go on a trip out of Assam viz. Sikkim, Darjeeling, Nagaland, Bhutan and Nepal along with other co-trainees which was planned (?) by “The Bluffmaster”. We seven had foreseen that these plans were not going to happen and on 6^th December we planned (master plan) to visit Arunachal Pradesh which was presumed impossible by every other person in ILP.

We seven, like a secret mission, to make the impossible possible, started hunting travel agents to book the vehicle and to get the inner line pass to Arunachal Pradesh. We had lot of challenges, foremost is we had less than 7 hours to get the pass from Deputy Resident Commissioner, Government of Arunachal Pradesh. Next one is to convince our facilitators to allow us for this plan which they had thought was not a good or safe idea to execute. Last but not the least there were landslides happening on the way for which we had to take all the care.

The night of 7^th December 2012 was filled with excitement, with the coming day to be bliss as we would be in the Land of The Rising Sun, the place about which we had read only in books and visited only in our dreams. It was really a dream come true for us, visiting the most exotic places like Dhirang, Bomdila and Sela Pass.

We had a roller-coaster of a ride at night, journeying towards Bomdila and reached around 8:30AM in the morning. It was a beautiful small town, with brilliant landscape and snow-clad mountains of the Himalayan Range. We had our first stop at the Buddhist Monastery, the repository of culture which was a mind blowing experience. We were unfortunate that we could not visit the Craft centre and Shopping centre, since it was a Saturday and they were closed, which would have given us a feel of the local version of Himalayan Buddhist life.

We had a scrumptious meal in Hotel Siphiyang Phong after which we experienced the real cold for the lifetime. Then we left for Dhirang, which was a journey of about 2 hours along the valleys. We reached by dawn and found place for our stay. Even though it had turned dark, our enthusiasm was at its best and we made our way towards the hot water spring in Dhirang. This was highly adventurous as the whole town was out of power and we had to use our flashlights to reach this place, feeling all along like sleuthing Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes. We returned to the place of our stay, had a late dinner in that chilly night, the temperature dropped subzero and were freezing away, never feeling sorry for the experience. We went to sleep hoping to see the ice-capped snowy peaks the next day.

The next day started off at 5.00 am in the foggy morning and a nice drive through the narrow and steep curvy roads that lead us to Sela Pass. The inexorable charm of Lilly white snow, meandering water-bodies and prominent hillocks refreshed our mind, heart and soul. The snow fall we experienced was breath taking wondering many a times if it was India or Switzerland.

We literally had gone crazy throwing snow on each other, taking as many clips as possible, skiing, jumping around and trying to feel every second we stayed there. In fact, we were not ready to face the truth that we had to leave the place. It was indeed a thrilling experience to be in this part of India.

After two long lovely days, our celebrations came to an end. With all this amazing, astonishing and memorable experiences we had, we started off towards Guwahati. Though the trip is over, the memories of the beautiful days are still fresh in our thoughts, the thoughts we oath to cherish for an eternity and beyond.